Sunday, July 1, 2012

The Window

[In honor of our Founding Fathers, an archive edition of American History Now]

So
there they are, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, one a youthful 70 and
the other a fussy 41, sharing a bed at an inn in New Jersey.
They’re on their way from Philadelphia to Staten Island, part of a
delegation sent by the Continental Congress to negotiate with Admiral
Lord Richard Howe of the Royal Navy, in the hopes of avoiding
a full-blown war between England and her American colonies. Two weeks
earlier, George Washington’s fledgling army escaped seemingly certain
destruction in Brooklyn and is for now, at least, alive to fight another
day. Lord Howe hopes he can talk his American friends out of making
a huge mistake. Adams considers Howe a phony, his overtures nothing
more than “Machiavellian maneuvers.” That’s why he was chosen to be one
of the negotiators. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, a man who had
been reluctant to support independence (he has, and will, worry about
the preservation of slavery) is another. And old Ben Franklin, who knew
Howe back in England, will be the third.
It is the evening of September 9, 1776. The negotiators pause in their
journey to spend the night in Brunswick, New Jersey. Unfortunately,
there’s not much lodging to be had in the local taverns. Franklin and
Adams agree to share a tiny room, no fireplace, with a single bed and a
single open window. It is chilly, and Adams, a self described invalid,
is “afraid of the air in the night” and shuts it. “Oh!” says Franklin.
“Don’t shut the window. We shall be suffocated.” When Adams relates his
fears of coming down with an illness from the bad night air, Franklin,
ever the scientist, replies by saying that the air in the room is far
more likely to be a problem than that outside. “Come!” he tells Adams.
Open the window and come to bed and I will convince you. I believe you
are not acquainted with my Theory of Colds.”

Adams complies and joins Franklin in bed. He is curious, even at “the
risqué of a cold,” to hear Franklin’s reasoning. Lying there in the
dark, side by side, Franklin begins his explanation, which, while
apparently of some interest to Adams, literally puts him to sleep (“I
left him and his Philosophy together,” he will later write, hearing
Franklin trail off just as he does.) They will argue the point again,
and in his account of their exchanges Adams will muse on Franklin’s
reasoning but remain unconvinced.
At this point in his life, Adams admires Franklin. He likes to say that
had Franklin done nothing more than invent the lightning rod, the world
would justly honor this “great and good man.” But the next time they
team up again, this time in Paris to negotiate an alliance with the
French government – a phase of the two men's careers brilliantly captured in the 2008 HBO series, John Adams, from which the above photo was taken –
Adams begins to have his doubts. Mr. “Early to Bed and Early to Rise”
sleeps late all the time. (He slept through a lot of the Continental
Congress, and though Adams will not be there to catch him, Franklin will
sleep through a lot of the Constitutional Convention as well.) He
drinks too much; he spends too much. And his behavior with French women
is downright embarrassing. Adams feels self-conscious about his French,
but as he learns it himself he begins to realize that Franklin
understands a lot less than he lets on. And when Adams – once again
playing bad cop, albeit a bit over his head – annoys the French foreign
minister, Franklin writes a letter to Congress telling them that Adams
is foolishly tampering with Franklin’s own delicate diplomacy. Adams
will never forget or forgive Franklin for that.

Franklin is probably right to dump Adams. Adams probably knows Franklin is right, too. He is over
his head. Adams is an intelligent and decent man. But he’s too
stubborn, moralistic and vain to be a successful diplomat. He’s honest
to a fault – he can’t play the game the way Franklin, who laughs right
along when the King puts his image on the bottom his courtesan’s chamber
pot, does. He tries not to lie, even to himself.
Part of the reason why someone like Franklin is such a trial to Adams is
that he understands that the man really does exhibit traits Adams
himself would be lucky to have. Franklin’s cool cheerfulness is a rebuke
to Adams’s repressed stolidity. But a hunger for recognition, a hunger
that’s never really sated, will not give Adams rest. His wonderfully
acidic expression of resentment in 1790 encapsulates his frustration:
“The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to
the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s
electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That
Franklin electrified him with his rod and thenceforth these two
conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures, and war.” (It was
Adams who had proposed Washington take command of the Continental Army –
an excellent idea, and one he can’t help but at least partially
regret.)

Adams had about as successful a career as any person could ever
rationally hope. From modest beginnings as a shoemaker’s son, he became a
self-educated lawyer, political activist, and diplomat. He collaborated
with Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence, and his work
on the Massachusetts constitution was a major influence on the federal
one. He managed to spend eight years generally keeping his mouth shut as
vice president (no small achievement, particularly for him), and went
on to become president himself. And he had the good sense and good
fortune to marry Abigail, who brought wisdom, humor, and joy into his
life. He lived to see his son John Quincy, become president. We should
all be so lucky.
But somehow, you rarely get the impression that John Adams was happy. To
be sure, he had legitimate sorrows, among them a son who drank himself
to death and a daughter who died of cancer. He had powerful enemies,
notably Alexander Hamilton and his erstwhile friend Thomas Jefferson,
who, despite hating each other, worked to deny Adams a second term as
president. (It’s to their credit that Adams and Jefferson were later
able to patch things up – though perhaps it’s no accident that they did
so while remaining 500 miles apart.) Still, you get the sense that the
hardest single thing about John Adams’s life is that he had to live with
John Adams. Feeling that way is hard enough. But it’s even harder when
you’ve got people like Franklin, so seemingly self-assured, by your
side.

Adams recorded the scene of his night with Franklin in the autobiography
he began writing after his forced retirement from politics following
his failed bid for re-election in 1800. Though he had a diary to draw
on, the editor of the Adams Papers, L.H. Butterfield, reported in 1961
that he wrote this scene “from unaided memory.” I see him at his estate,
Peacefield, in Quincy, Massachusetts, an old man remembering himself as
a younger one, with Franklin, who had been dead for years, alive and
likeable. Adams had been upset earlier that September day when he saw
what he regarded as the indiscipline and “dissipation” of the American
soldiers he had seen on the road (my guess is that he was being
prudishly unrealistic). But he was “determined that it should not
dishearten me.” I can’t be sure, but it seems like he’s succeeding, and
that the memory of that night brings him pleasure and maybe even comfort
in the long twilight of his life. Writing it down gives him something
to do.

About King's Survey

King's Survey is an imaginary high school history class taught by Abraham King, a.k.a. "Mr. K." Though the posts proceed in a loosely chronological fashion, you can drop in on the conversation any time. For more background on this series, see my other site, Conversing History. The opening chapter of "Kings Survey" is directly below.

“The Greatest Catholic Poet of Our Time . . . Is a Guy from the JerseyShore? Yup,” in The Best Catholic Writing 2007, edited by Jim Manney (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2007)

“I’s a Man Now: Gender and African-American Men,” in Divided Houses:Gender and the Civil War, edited by Nina Silber and Catherine Clinton (Oxford University Press, 1992).

THE COMPLETE MARIA CHRONICLES, 2009-2010

Most writing in the vast discourse about American education is analytic and/or prescriptive: It tells. Little of that writing is actually done by active classroom teachers. The Maria Chronicles, like the Felix Chronicles that preceded them (see directly below), takes a different approach: They show. These (very) short stories of moments in the life of the fictional Maria Bradstreet, who teaches U.S. history at Hudson High School, located somewhere in metropolitan New York, dramatize the issues, ironies, and realities of a life in schools. I hope you find them entertaining. And, just maybe, useful, whether you’re a teacher or not.–Jim Cullen